In the last several years the use of hard surfaces in residential establishments such as homes, condos, apartments, etc has increased significantly over the use of soft surfaces such as carpets, and rugs. The trend now is for flooring in areas such as living rooms, dining rooms, dens, keeping rooms, etc to be made of hard surfaces, primarily wood. Wood flooring comes in a variety of types such as solid, engineered, and laminate hardwood. Wood flooring is either attached to a subfloor or non-attached (floating). Attached flooring can be installed in two ways. The flooring can be nailed down or glued down to the subflooring beneath. Subflooring is typically pressboard, plywood, or concrete. Sometimes a secondary subfloor such as cork is added for noise abatement.
The present invention is directed to the removal of an adhesive on a surface. Such hard surface may be wood flooring that has been attached using adhesives to keep the wood planks in place. A problem exists in some situations wherein adhesive that is smeared onto the wood flooring during the installation process cannot be easily removed if at all. This issue occurs when the installer does not remove smeared or excess glue off the boards in a timely manner. Some types of adhesives especially urethane based adhesives resist removal after the glue has cured. Typical removal processes involve cleaning the floors with solvents such as mineral spirits or using adhesive removal towels wipes or liquids.
There are many companies that manufacture adhesives wherein heavy and light smudges remaining on wood flooring would be difficult to remove after curing. A few examples of adhesive products from three of these companies are Roberts 1530, 1540, and 1409 Moisture Cure Urethane adhesives; DriTac 7600, 7500, and 7400 Urethane adhesives; and Bostik MVP and TKO adhesives. In addition to adhesives these companies supply adhesive removal towel wipes for use with their specific adhesive products. Roberts recommends the R5505 Wipes. DriTac recommends the Wipe-Aways, and Bostik recommends the Ultimate Towel. The wipes are treated with special solvent products unique to each company. They also provide adhesive removers in liquid form but the wipes are more convenient to use and reduce the possibility of over use.
Towel wipes are ineffective at adhesive removal if the adhesive has cured and the adhesive polymer has cross-linked and is no longer soluble in solvents. Some removal can be achieved but with some difficulty. It is an object of the present invention to provide a device, method, or kit that will remove the adhesive, such as urethane, after it has hardened on surface without damaging the underlying surface.